


The truth uncovered

by ChocoNut



Series: Tales of love (Season 3/4) [20]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Diverges after 4x1, F/M, Fluff, Love Confessions, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 08:37:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21241262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoNut/pseuds/ChocoNut
Summary: Breakfast with Olenna Tyrell proves to be an eye opener for Brienne.





	The truth uncovered

“Why don’t we talk about your young man, my dear?” Lady Olenna started the conversation, leaning across the table to attack Brienne with an appraising look.

Thrown off-guard by the suggestion, Brienne coughed, managing a defensive, “You’re mistaken, or perhaps, fooled by rumours. I don’t fancy Renly.” 

_ Because someone else has occupied your heart these days, _added a small voice within her, the accuracy of her reply stunning her, the fact that Renly had quietly vacated her mind, only to be replaced by--

She gripped the arms of her chair, stupefied at how efficiently her mind had come up with the same name again, once more trapping her in endless loops of thoughts about _ him. _ Often these days, she’d slip into memories of their travel, of the ups and downs they’d been through, of how they’d been to hell and back. “I’m not in love with him,” she asserted, more to convince herself, dismissing these regular recollections as nothing but her idle mind’s anxiety. She had nothing to do in King’s Landing, no work nor entertainment except frequent meetings in the garden with Olenna Tyrell and Margaery, her restless mind an ideal breeding ground for lapses like this. 

Smiling benevolently, the elderly woman handed her a plate. “Cake?” she offered, her keen eyes prying Brienne’s for a possibility of some juicy gossip. “And I presume you were talking about Renly again.”

“No, thank you,” Brienne politely refused a second helping. “And y--yes, I meant Renly,” she weakly agreed, clamping down her inner voice that had become deafening now, claiming repeatedly that she’d fallen for the Knight she’d been determined to loathe. Hatred at first sight, it was, when she’d pulled out that filthy sack to uncover his smug face, but over the weeks that followed, things had changed, _ they _ had changed, her feelings for him had undergone a drastic transformation. 

Ever since he’d risked his life for her, he’d held her mind hostage, refusing to let her be at peace.

Lady Olenna reached across the table to clasp her hand, slowing down her stream of thoughts. “Really?”

Unwilling to burden her mind further and keen to keep away from a sticky subject that would bring her nothing but awkwardness and despair, Brienne gently pulled away. “I must get back to my chambers, my lady,” she said, “It’s--”

“Ah, there he is!” exclaimed Olenna, who was looking over her head, distracted by someone who’d just arrived.

Curious, Brienne turned to follow her gaze, then scrambled to her feet when she noticed their visitor. “Ser Jaime,” she breathed, not knowing what to make of his unannounced arrival and the completely unprepared state she was in to face him. Before she could escape, or even think of getting away, Jaime was by their side.

“Lady Olenna,” he greeted her, kissing her hand, but to Brienne, the only courtesy he showed was an across-the-table short nod and a terse, “Lady Brienne.”

“To what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Ser Jaime?” inquired Lady Olenna, from time to time, casting Brienne suspicious looks, and before he could answer, she took charge of the conversation with an enthusiastic, “Oh, and I must say, what a coincidence! We were just talking about you.”

“No, we weren’t,” Brienne countered, astounded that the shrewd old woman had been referring to Jaime, not Renly. People had, all along, been right about her. Nothing ever got past her piercing gaze and all-perceiving mind.

Jaime tossed her a side-glance, then chuckled at their companion. “Lady Brienne must have countless things to talk about with you, and I’m afraid I’m, perhaps, the last on that list. Or not at all.”

“You may not be the one she’d want to talk about, but you’re the foremost thing on her mind,” quipped the old woman, and Brienne bit her lip in panic, wanting to rush out of there, to pretend she hadn’t heard this embarrassingly correct observation being tossed around so easily, that too to the man who was inadvertently responsible for her plight.

Jaime laughed. “Probably, my lady, but that doesn’t mean they’re pleasant thoughts. She’s hated me since the day we met. Kingslayer, she used to call me,” he recalled with a faraway look, “and--”

“I was right,” intervened Olenna, an all-knowing glint in her eyes when she examined Jaime's face. “You’re not far behind.”

White as a sheet, he took a step backwards. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, my dear ser,” she explained, fixing Jaime with the same look she’d tortured Brienne with earlier, “that you’re smitten with Lady Brienne too. Just as she has fallen in love with you.”

Brienne was about to shout her objection, but Jaime got there before her. “I’m not _ smitten _,” he yelped, wide-eyed with shock. “I don’t--”

Olenna Tyrell waved her hand, carelessly dismissing Jaime’s denial. “Refusing to accept the truth is going to lead neither of you anywhere,” she advised. “So why don’t you both sit down, have some cake and talk it out?” 

“I’m leaving,” began Brienne, her ear-tips on fire.

“Me too,” echoed Jaime.

The old woman rose, instead. “I’m the one who should be leaving you to talk,” she announced, then clutching her stick, she beckoned to her attendant. “Carry on, you two,” she urged, with an encouraging smile, and before either of them could respond or contest her assumption, she had left them alone to face each other and the embarrassment they’d now have to deal with.

The air was filled with an incessant chirping of birds, yet the silence Lady Olenna's absence had left behind was deafening and uncomfortable. For what felt like a thousand years, Brienne dared not spare Jaime even a fleeting glance, and he didn’t seem to be able to look her in the eye either, both of them staring everywhere except at each other.

“I’m leaving,” she announced, unable to bear the quiet anymore.

“What was she going on about?” Jaime stopped her before she could slip away. Meeting her eyes, at last, he asked, “Everything she said--are you in--”

“No!” she denied, before he could read her like a book. “I’m not. I can never fall for you--she’s mistaken,” she lied, determined not to expose her feelings to a barrage of his snarky comments.

“Good,” he brusquely replied, his cold response leaving her in deep contemplation. Was that relief she could sense in his tone? Was he at ease that he wouldn’t have to cope with another woman hopelessly falling for him? These questions led to frustration, her inability to cast away her nagging feelings for him adding to her woes. Women losing their hearts to him was routine for him. In the long line of maidens who would swoon at merely the mention of his name, she was just another, and an ugly one that too, one he couldn’t bring himself to befriend, let alone fall in love with. 

_ I’m never going to surrender _ , she decided, _ nor am I going to succumb to his charms. _ She’d bury her feelings deep within herself, and one day they’d vanish and allow her to live in peace.

“What brings you here so early in the morning?” she asked, keen to change the subject whilst wondering why he was here in the first place. “If it’s Lady Olenna--”

“Not her.” His expression shifted, and gone was the irritation the idea of falling for Brienne had stirred in him. “It’s you I came to speak with, wench.”

“What, about?”

He clenched and unclenched his fist a couple of times. “After our conversation that day at the Godswood I didn’t want you to think that I--” Guilt clouded his eyes, along with something else she couldn’t place. “I didn’t want you to think that I’ve forgotten about Sansa. I’ll do something to get you both out of here,” he assured her, his liquid gaze attacking her, tormenting her, “I promise.”

Her indignation fell apart, and with it, was shattered to smithereens, the resolution she’d taken to immunise herself against him. “Thank you,” she said, touched by the importance he attached to the word he’d given her. 

Deciding it was best to remove herself from his presence, she was about to get away, when he stopped her with an abrupt, “Why, Brienne?”

She turned on her heel. “Why--what?”

“You can never fall for me, you said,” he mused, crossing the hurdle of chairs to reach her. “Why? Am I so unsuitable a prospect for a husband that no woman can--”

“I didn’t imply that,” Brienne immediately justified, the fire from her ears spreading to her cheeks and neck, “I just said that I--”

“Why, then?” he demanded, advancing towards her.

“I--” she stuttered, struggling to find words to strengthen her reasoning. “You’re the one who kept telling me I’m ugly,” she reminded him, welcoming the rising irritation the memory of his nasty words evoked in her, thankful that it served as an effect cover to conceal her real feelings from him. Adopting a defiant stance, she crossed her arms to her chest, glaring at him, daring him to refute her claim.

Never one to accept defeat in an argument, he returned her angry stare. “You think I’m unworthy of you,” he concluded on her behalf, “and that’s why--”

“Don’t you put words into my mouth,” she pounced back, exasperated at his pathetic assumption. “It was you, in fact, who took to constantly provoking me. All the time we’ve been together, you’ve hit me with nothing but criticism,” she went on with a heavy heart, doubting if his opinion of her was any better than what he’d begun with, “sarcasm and a heavy dose of your taunts--”

“You called me a coward,” he shouted, “and mocked me for losing to a woman!” Another step, and he was within a foot of her, his enraged face inches away from hers, the fire his blazing eyes spewed battling the flames rising in hers. “You were no less, wench!”

Tired of the pointless discussion and her heart aching, she wanted to put an end to this. “This is going nowhere, now if you’ll excuse me, I have someplace to go to.”

She retreated, but Jaime swiftly covered the gap, putting himself closer to her than he was before. “It can wait,” he growled in impatience, then looking deeply into her eyes, he resumed the conversation with a soft, “You hate me.”

Bemused, she didn’t know what it was meant to convey. Was it a question? Was it an assumption? A bloody miscalculated conclusion? Or was it merely blindness on his part - his inability to see what someone like Olenna Tyrell could point out so clearly after merely a couple of meetings with her? 

She opened her mouth to hit him back with a retort befitting his stupid interpretation, but he leaned into her, smashing to tiny bits the eloquence she’d been brimming with a while ago. His lips hovered dangerously over hers, her resistance to his charm and determination not to swoon in his presence threatening to unceremoniously abandon her with every passing second. “Say something, wench,” he pressed, his voice seductive, the scent of leather and dust and metal that wafted off him alluring and distracting.

“You hate me too,” she breathed, fighting to keep her nerves alive. “I’m much uglier in daylight, aren’t I?” she couldn’t help quoting the first words he’d greeted her with. “I’m ugly, I’m no lady, no match for--”

She ceased talking when his hand suddenly flew to her neck, his other arm enclosing her waist. “What are you doing?” she panicked. “What--”

She was in his arms, too close, too intimate, chest to chest, lips to lips, and what came after, was bliss unlike anything she’d been blessed with so far. Kisses, she’d heard of, from maidens she’d grown up with. Kisses, she’d read of, in books she’d grown to care nothing about. Kisses, she’d dreamed of, many nights in her fantasies involving Renly, but this was unlike any of them. This was like none she’d ever thought she’d experience. Jaime was nothing like she’d thought he would be. Truth, it was, and not merely his arrogant conclusion that there were no men like him. Only him. He was fire, and she burned under him, melting away like a soft stick of wax. He was a storm, dragging her along, and she drifted away with him like a leaf, helpless and bewitched with nowhere else to go. An ocean, he was, and she sank in his embrace, deeper and deeper until she could see no more, hear no more and feel no more than his lips on hers, his body wrapped around hers and his breath filling her nostrils.

“Well,” he mouthed, pressing his forehead to hers when they had, after kissing for about a million seconds, decided to breathe air instead of one another, “such terrible liars, we are, aren’t we?”

“I thought you were a better liar, Ser Jaime,” she teased, when the kiss had finally sunk in and she was convinced that it had, _ indeed _, happened for real. “You’re as bad as I am.”

“Meet me here tonight,” he insisted, with a sense of urgency, “after supper, when there’ll be no one to disturb us. We need to talk, and--” he broke into a mischievous grin “--maybe engage in a sparring match or two? What do you say, Brienne?”

She giggled. “You’ll lose.”

The grin had vanished, and in his eyes was a look that sent her pulse racing, her imagination running amok. “Bronn’s been training me,” he revealed, “so save your overconfidence for later.”

She gulped, for the hidden intent behind his invitation appeared to be far more than just a sword-fight. “Prove yourself first, let your sword do the talking,” she said, trying not to sound squeaky. 

“Oh, it will, wench. It will.” He pulled her to his chest. “Give me a chance, and I'll overpower you, fling you down…” He paused to breathe heavily. “You damn well know what follows that,” he warned, sending a shiver down her spine when he brought his mouth to hers. “If I win, you do as I say,” he put forth his terms, “and if you win, I’ll do your bidding.” His kisses went from soft and tender to fiery and full of hunger. “_ Whatever _ you want, wench.”

Footsteps behind her, thankfully, prevented her from dissolving into a desperate puddle in the garden, and she drew away from his embrace, worried that one of Cersei’s men might spot them. “Someone’s coming,” she said, hurriedly pushing him away. “We need to leave.”

“Tonight, my lady,” he called out, when they parted company to set out in opposite directions, “I’ll be waiting.”

Smiling to herself, she shouted back, “It’s a promise.” 

She paused to take in her surroundings before she left the garden, the sun, the trees, the flowers and the blue sky more beautiful this morning than they’d ever been before. 

_ Whatever you want… _

His words never leaving her head, she blushed as she hurried away, knowing that whatever be the outcome of their duel this time, they’d both be winners.

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I write one of these, I tell myself it'll be the last, but I just can't stop myself.  
As always, thanks for reading!


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